by Chris Knopf
Wendy Wolsonowicz would probably find that appalling, given where she’d decided to live. She was the only one of the immediate family I hadn’t talked to, so I picked her as my next stop.
She’d moved to Shelter Island from Arizona about the same time as her adopted brother. Shelter Island is a big landmass wedged between the North and South Forks of the East End. You can only get there by ferry. This is one of the reasons it’s escaped some of the more rapacious development out here, but there’s also not a ton of land you can develop, since a huge hunk of the place is wildlife preserve. Wendy had somehow managed to buy the only piece of private property within the largest preserve, an island itself surrounded by a couple thousand acres of wilderness.
At two million dollars, a two-acre parcel boasting the ultimate in fashionable seclusion might look like a steal. Until you read the fine print, where it says she can’t sell it, transfer ownership, or pass it down to her heirs. The seller was an ornery holdout from the time the Nature Conservancy was buying up contiguous tracts who negotiated a onetime private sale with the deed forfeited to the preserve upon the death of the buyer.
So this was a girl serious about her privacy.
A few minutes after turning on to County Road in my new car I was reproaching myself for holding on to the rattletrap Toyota for so long. The only similarity between the two vehicles was they had steering wheels and tires and moved over public thoroughfares. The Volvo was so quiet you couldn’t hear the engine when the radio was on. In contrast to the pickup, where you couldn’t hear the radio when the engine was on. I’d have to exercise more to compensate for the reduced effort needed to shift gears, steer, and brake, but on the bright side, my kidneys would probably last a few more years.
I turned up North Sea Road and headed for the ferry to Shelter Island. The decision to go solo was looking better all the time. It was dicey enough barging uninvited into Wendy Wolsonowicz’s costly isolation without bringing along a behemoth like Harry Goodlander.
Alone, I got to pay a little attention to the weather, which was exceedingly lovely and mild and sparkly, as it often gets in the fall. North Sea Road winds all the way to Noyac, where it becomes Noyac Road and goes from there up through North Haven to the South Ferry dock. Most of the trip is in the woods, except for a long, gentle curve along the southeastern shore of Noyac Bay. My heart always picks up a beat or two when I look out over the water, even after a lifetime of looking at the little lakelike bays that fill in the gaps between the forks.
Today it was fairly wavy, but no whitecaps, and bluer than usual. Probably because of the deep blue autumnal sky. This was how water at its best was supposed to look. Not British Racing Green. Not turquoise, like a ’55 T-Bird. But a nice deep blue, like a shiny new Volvo station wagon.
I was halfway around the bay shore when a big pickup came up fast behind me. He flicked on his high beams and blasted his horn. I pulled onto the shoulder and he whooshed by. Then all I had to do was wait for my pulse to fall to normal range and dig my fingernails out of the steering wheel before getting back under way.
“Dickhead,” I whispered into the soft silence of the station wagon.
The guys who load the ferry noticed right away that I had a new car and went out of their way to put me in a safe spot, thereby redeeming the whole class of young men with long sideburns and baseball caps, like the kid in the truck who’d almost run me down. I got out and stood at the side of the boat to look at the water and breathe in a little salt air. The channel was a lot choppier than Noyac Bay, but the stolid, flat-bottomed little ferry wasn’t fazed.
When I got to the other shore I looked at the printout of the Internet map. Wendy’s place was close to the ferry landing, which was at the southwest corner of the big preserve. So within a few minutes I was following a gravel road dotted with signs hysterically warning against messing with the wildlife, as if that’s what people came to wildlife preserves to do.
Wendy’s house was built on a rise, with a driveway that curved more than necessary up to an area in front of a separate two-story garage. The house fit on the wooded lot as if it had grown up from the soil along with the surrounding trees.
Three dogs streaked across the property the moment I pulled into the drive. A big chocolate Lab, a white shepherd, and a midsize gray-and-black mishmash of a thing. They looked more curious than aggressive, but I stayed in the car until I reached the house, where I sat and prayed none of them would jump up on the door to get a better look.
A sharp whistle pulled the dogs away from the car. They ran to the house, then came back down more docilely, followed by a tall, big-boned woman in coveralls. She was somewhere in her thirties, with dark hair afflicted by an excess of kink and wave, like yours truly. Her eyes were pale blue, her face broad and friendly, her stride strong and direct.
I got out of the car and offered my hand.
“If you can do that for me, you’ll be a miracle worker,” she said, pointing to my face, while reaching out the other hand to shake.
This would have been an unusual greeting for anybody, but more so for a woman who’d recently had her face rebuilt.
“I didn’t think it showed,” I said, unsure of what else to say.
She lingered over our handshake like my dad’s awkward engineer friends would do as a lame form of flirtation.
“Are you kidding me? I love freckles.”
Being the keen-witted, perceptive lawyer that I am, I spotted a miscommunication.
“I’m Jackie Swaitkowski,” I said. “I’m an attorney. I was hoping to talk to you about a case I’m working on.”
“You’re not from the Fabulous Face?” she asked, looking bemused but no less friendly.
“Sorry, no.”
She dropped my hand, looking a little disappointed.
“They’re supposed to come today. I finally got up the nerve to try it out.”
“Try what?”
“A full neck-up makeover. They come to your house. A plus for me, because I don’t have a car.” She used the tips of her fingers to tap around her face. “First they give you a consult, then do things with peels and mud and face creams.”
She looked around her property.
“I spend a lot of time outside,” she said. “After a while I start looking like Jeremiah Johnson.”
“I understand completely,” I said. “For every hour in court I need at least thirty minutes in a bathtub.”
The Lab had been shoving against my legs as I spoke to Wendy, and I’d been scrunching around the top of his head. The white shepherd decided to get in on the action. The other dog still held back, moving to and fro, low to the ground and looking up at Wendy with nervous eyes.
“You said something about a case,” said Wendy.
“Your uncle’s, Sergey Pontecello. He was a client of mine. Do you mind if we chat for a few minutes?”
She answered by walking over to a picnic table under a gnarly-looking shade tree. I followed her and we sat across from each other. I looked down at the tabletop and noticed purple and orange lumps of organic debris, obviously fallen from the tree above. Considering too late, as usual, the fate of my favorite lime green jeans.
“Because he’s dead?” she said.
I couldn’t tell if the question was rhetorical, so I assumed it wasn’t.
“He died a few days ago.”
She folded her hands and looked down at the table.
“I heard. The police told me.”
“Did they come out?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I told them everything I could think of on the phone. They said they might call me back, but nothing about seeing me.”
“Odd way to learn about a dead relative, from the police.”
“I never talk to my mother. Did she send you?”
I told her no.
“You don’t seem too busted up about it,” I said.
She raised her shoulders, then settled them back down in a languid shrug.
“Uncle Sergey didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t wish him any harm, but he was just this weird little dude who married my aunt. Who I mostly knew as a crabby old librarian who smoked like a chimney and insulted waitresses. I only saw her about once a year. What did they do, have a funeral or something?”
The gray-and-black dog had followed us, staying close to Wendy’s side. I’d forgotten it was there until it startled me by jumping on the bench and sitting down next to her. She stroked the dog’s back.
“Poaggie always demands a seat at the table.”
“Everyone needs a protector,” I said.
“Do you have one?”
I pondered that.
“If I wanted.”
“We’re not talking about dogs, are we?” she said.
“Not in the literal sense.”
She looked at her hands again, and in the quiet of that moment, I listened to the world surrounding her reclusive corner of Shelter Island. There was a small prop-driven plane overhead and the distant burr of an outboard, the wind messing up the leafy treetops and the faint whirr of airborne pests. Not much else.
“Quiet out here,” I said.
“Oh, yes. That’s the point. Maybe you should tell me what your point is.”
She looked over my shoulder, hoping the girl from the Fabulous Face would soon arrive.
“I don’t know if there’s a funeral planned. Nothing’s been announced. It might be because Sergey’s in the forensics morgue in Riverhead, which is where they put murder victims to perform criminal autopsies and sort out custody of the body.”
Wendy looked only mildly interested, as if I’d told her Sergey had croaked on the golf course or died quietly in his sleep.
“Murdered? Ridiculous. Who would possibly want to murder him?” she asked.
She’d folded her arms as if to stop herself from playing with her hands.
“So you think some people are too ridiculous to kill?” I asked.
“I do. Me, for example. I live here alone and hardly ever leave. I don’t even have a car. That’s one of the things I miss about Aunt Betty. She used to drive me in the morning from the South Ferry to the train station in Southampton, and back again at night. I have to go into the City every August because of this dumb proviso my father put into his will. Didn’t trust his little girl to look after her own money, so he forces me to prove my competence to these grubby old guys who pat me on the knee and take a fat fee out of my inheritance. Other than that, I’ll go for weeks without seeing anyone but a park ranger, usually from about a hundred yards. I was scared to death the first year, but then I realized killers like more of a challenge.”
I wanted to tell her killers weren’t just stupid and evil, they were stupid and lazy and almost always kill people easiest to kill. A challenge was the last thing they wanted. But to what end?
“Why the isolation?” I asked. “It’s pretty here, but it’s got to get lonely.”
“I’m not a people person,” she said. “And I have Bilbo, Poaggie, and Bert. Dog people would understand.”
“Not that I don’t admire you,” I said. “It takes a centered person to live in a place like this. In a week I’d drive myself crazy.”
“Too late for me on that one,” she said, smiling agreeably. “So if my mother didn’t send you, who did?”
“I sent myself. Nobody else seems to care what happened to the funny old guy, except maybe the cops, and they have to. It’s their job.”
Wendy took a piece of half-carved wood out of her left pants pocket, and a Buck knife out of the right. It was a big knife, and she handled it like an old friend. The first pass dropped a long, curled piece of white wood on the table.
“Your brother said he doesn’t talk to your mother, either. What’s up with that?”
She didn’t look up at me but stopped whittling for a moment, then took off another slice.
“I love the way some people talk about the traditional family as the supreme state of being, the most moral, healthy, and divine association any person could ever have. Do you believe that, Miss … what was your name again?”
“Swaitkowski. Call me Jackie. It’s easier. And no, I don’t believe that.”
“Most of the world’s great tragedies occur within the family. Ever read Sophocles, Ibsen, or O’Neill? Let’s take a gander at Freud to see what he thought of the family unit.”
“What about Fuzzy. Do you talk to him?”
Wendy seemed to wear an impervious outer coating of amiability. It held its strength and resilience no matter where the conversation led.
“You’ve obviously spoken to him yourself,” she said, looking at me over the razor-sharp Buck knife. “What would you think?”
“That you’re not all that close?” I said brilliantly.
She smiled, taking it as a joke.
“I loved my father. He was all the family I ever cared about. When he died, that was that. So I am absolutely of no use to you whatsoever, in whatever you’re doing, which I still don’t quite understand.”
She carved off a bigger piece of wood than she’d probably intended. It flew across the table and fell in my lap. I left it there.
Poaggie had been sitting quietly through all this, his little black eyes trained on a spot somewhere below my chin, which I assumed to be my jugular. But then he jumped up and leaped off the bench. With a look of resigned patience, Wendy told me she probably should get back to her chores.
When I didn’t immediately move, some of her patience slipped away.
“I really have to insist,” she said in a way that reminded me a lot of her mother, Eunice.
I stood and brushed the colorful plant life off my pants. Wendy stood as well, and whistled. Bilbo, Poaggie, and Bert galloped up as if to herd me back to my car. I’m not good at ending things before I’m ready, but even I know diminishing returns when I see them.
The day was starting to wane, the sun closing in on the horizon. Photographers call this the magic hour because the light turns color dense enough to stick your hand into. It does great things for the complexion, and was appropriately kind to Wendy, whose slightly roughened veneer looked more radiantly and gorgeously healthy than weather-beaten.
“Don’t let ’em mess with that face of yours too much,” I told her. “It’s pretty fabulous as it is.”
She didn’t believe me, of course. No woman would entirely. Unless she’s one of those models who spends her young life drenched in adulation and magic-hour light.
Wendy gathered her hair at the back of her neck and pulled it to one side, giving me a look at the fullness of her face.
“That might be true if I had your freckles.”
I didn’t believe her, of course.
After climbing in the car, it took me a moment to find the key and the slot you stuck it in. Then a few moments more to remember I had to put my foot on the brake to make it work. There were a lot of safety features built into the Volvo that my Toyota would snicker at, if that was something old pickups could do. I found the button for the window and let it down. During all this goofing around, Wendy had been writing something on the back of a small piece of paper. She gave it to me through the window. It was her phone number and e-mail address.
“I’d really rather not have people coming to my house uninvited. It’s unsettling when you’re out of the way like this. You understand.”
“Sure,” I said. I gave her my card.
“My e-mail’s on there,” I said. “If you think of anything you want to tell me, feel free.”
She studied the card.
“He wasn’t funny,” she said.
“Huh?”
“You said he was a funny little guy. He wasn’t funny. He was unctuous and self-important and deluded to the point of being oblivious to everything going on around him. He was never funny.”
She put the card in the top pocket of her shirt and walked back toward her house.
Bert and Bilbo went with her, but Poaggie sat at the edge of the lawn and waite
d for me to leave.
“Creepy little mutt,” I said, loud enough for his sensitive dog ears to hear, and headed off toward the dying light of the sun, not so magical anymore.
8
After seeing Wendy Wolsonowicz, I spent the night finishing off half-smoked roaches stashed in various ashtrays around the house, brooding over dysfunctional families, including my own, and pretending not to be spooked by every random sound in the house.
The dope did a lot to take the edge off things, but I thought a little red wine in the mix would work even better. This led, as it sometimes did, to the opposite intended effect. The brooding slowly gave way to abject gloom, of the boozy free-floating variety, though it wasn’t long before I passed out on the couch, too tranquilized to be afraid, too immobilized to care.
When I woke the next day, my mood matched the sky, which was on the darker side of dark gray. I felt around the side table for the telephone, in the process clearing the table of a few catalogs and grabbing a handful of ashes, but eventually found the receiver and dialed a number I hoped my memory had accurately preserved.
“Goodlander GeoTransit,” said Harry as buoyantly as I’d hoped he would. “Goodlander speaking.”
“Say something positive about me,” I croaked, my voice clogged with the evening’s excess. “What am I good at?”
“Trivial Pursuit. The only time we played you basically ran the table.”
“Being good at trivia isn’t what I’m looking for. Something meaningful.”
“You don’t give up on people, no matter how much you might want to, until it’s proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they deserve being given up on. You don’t give up, period. No matter how hopeless the pursuit.”
A gentle warmth flowed into my chest, out to my limbs, and into my dreary, ill-tempered mind.
